1. Field of the Invention
The present invention deals with coke ovens and, in particular, with devices for cleaning coke oven doors.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Coke ovens are generally equipped at their ends with refractory lined doors which are removable to allow a charge to be pushed from an oven on completion of the coking process. After pushing it is often necessary to remove carbonaceous material from the oven door's peripheral seal ring and from the lateral surfaces of the refractory before the door is replaced. The carbonaceous material which accumulates on the seal ring generally consists of a viscous, tarry distillation product which is evolved during the coking process and which often may be satisfactorily removed by a scraping procedure. The refractory lateral surfaces of the coke oven doors, on the other hand, usually collect a different type of carbonaceous deposit. Such deposits generally consist of a hard carbonaceous material which strongly adheres to the lateral surfaces and which often accumulates to a considerable thickness so as to resist removal by the scraping methods used on the tarry distillation product.
Various devices have been suggested for cleaning coke oven doors. U.S. Pat. No. 3,448,475, for example, discloses a rotary door cleaner having two scraper tools which are pivotally interconnected to rotate about a common axis so that the seal ring surfaces and the lateral surfaces can be simultaneously scraped. While such scraping devices have been found to be effective in removing the aforementioned tarry deposits from the seal ring, it is found that a scraping action often fails to remove all of the accumulated hard carbonaceous deposits from the lateral surfaces of the door. Accordingly, it is sometimes necessary to remove these hard carbonaceous deposits by laborious methods such as by the use of jack hammers or the like. It is, therefore, the object of the present invention to provide a coke oven door cleaner that effectively removes such hard carbonaceous deposits and which, furthermore, permits improved operating efficiency due to the synchronization of its cleaning and propulsion elements.